Thursday, January 24, 2008

THE SEARCH WITHIN THE SEARCH, Part Two

FROM A SITE VISITOR: i seek a sadguru, finding your site i read of different teaching methods, different appraoch, different yoga. I have study teachings of hinduism, buddhism,even islam,now find advaita vedanta. How to find in all this the sadguru who is for me? Anwar

F.: So, Anwar, the question for you to consider before going any further in a search for an Advaita Vedanta sadguru is, are you truly ready for the non-dual Teachings?

Once the search reaches the level where you are,most persons (specifically, over six billion of them on the planet) turn to organized religion for “the answers”…exactly as you have done in the past. Are you ready to transition beyond that level, or are you looking for more dogma, merely wrapped in different packaging?

Certainly, there are enough versions of the Advaita Vedanta Teachings available, and some are definitely presented more as a religion than as a philosophy. If the accumulation of even more dogmatic teachings interests you, then you will certainly be able to find a sadguru who will present the Advaita Vedanta teachings in the form of religious principles.

Other sadgurus are also available who will present the Advaita Vedanta teachings in the form of spiritual principles or lofty spiritual principles or even noble and sublime spiritual principles.

Yet the version of the teachings that provided the spark that ignited the gunpowder that completely blew away all belief in “floyd” (and, along with that, the belief in any concepts) was a philosophical version that was presented along with pointers that redirected the focus of the consciousness toward empirical evidence.

After “the explosion,” neither religion nor spirituality (nor even philosophy) remained. In an 11 June 2007 posting, the following was offered in this regards:

The Advaitin Douwe Tiemersma—a member of the Philosophical Faculty at ErasmusUniversity in Holland at the time—explained it this way:

There are various religions [that] suffer from certain inherent limitations. They couch into fine-sounding words their traditional beliefs and ideologies, theological or philosophical. Believers, however, discover the limited range of meaning and applicability of these words, sooner or later. They get disillusioned and tend to abandon the systems, in the same way as scientific theories are abandoned, when they are called in question by too much contradictory empirical data.

Of course, religions thrive in spite of all of the scientific evidence and all of the “contradictory empirical data” that refute their teachings, but if you would find the truth, a study of the facts should make clear that your search must move beyond those systems.

The consideration then is, are you willing to question what you have been told and seek via a means that is totally beyond the systems employed so far? If so, that might explain why you have continued to search and why you discovered “Advaita Vedanta”: on some level, you realize that you have not been told the truth or at least that you have not yet found the truth.

So, to review: your search has uncovered a set of teachings called “Advaita Vedanta” that are presented by some teachers as a set of philosophical considerations, by others as religious dogma, and by many as a set of spiritual principles. In your effort to find “your sadguru,” the question must be asked:

Is your inclination to continue to search via religious venues or might you be interested in a philosophy that sets forth pointers that are being validated more and more each day by observable, scientific facts? “Versions” of both can be found under the heading of “Advaita Vedanta.”

In your study of hinduism, buddhism, and islam, you have merely been moving about within the third of seven steps on the “path” to Realization. There, searching via religious and/or spiritual vehicles happens. You have been moving about in a maze without seeking the exit which would allow you to move to the next stage of the “journey” to Full Realization.

Understand, however, that in the case of this speck of consciousness, Full Realization required the transcendence of that religious and spiritual level. Billions claim that they are content in their fixation at that point. So it is. The fact that you are continuing to search after all of your studying at that level might suggest that contentment has not manifested there.

You must now determine if you would remain at that “place” or complete the entire “journey” instead. Here, the invitation is to transcend all relative concepts and dualistic beliefs;

thereafter, the re-purified consciousness allows You (ItSelf) to “return to”—to “go back to”—that mode of functioning that was the multi-million-year norm, namely, living out the relative existence in an all-natural fashion instead of trying to live in a supernatural fashion. Please enter the silence of contemplation. (To be continued)

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